


That Which Survives

by trill_gutterbug



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Force Bonds, In Which Trill Continues to Name Fics after Star Trek Episodes Because Why the Eff Not, M/M, Mild canon divergence, also i guess there's a mild implication of dubcon via force bonding? ymmv, immediately post-tfa, medical h/c i guess but like.... this is kylo and hux we're talking about so the c is lacking, stranded on a shuttle, the tragic destruction of starkiller base
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 16:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13321728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trill_gutterbug/pseuds/trill_gutterbug
Summary: Ren pushes himself up on one elbow. He doesn’t wince, although bending at the waist like that must pull his injury. “How, Hux. How did you find me.”Another moment of hesitation. Hux knows, but saying it aloud feels like defeat, like giving Ren accolades he doesn’t deserve. Ren stares at him implacably, waiting. Hux groans. He wiggles his fingers.Ren nods.





	That Which Survives

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first half of this fic waaaaay back, about a week after TFA came out, before we learned via ~~clumsy retconning~~ Word of God that Hux had found Kylo on Starkiller by means of a tracker, as opposed to ::wiggles fingers:: ~*The Force*~. Also before the strong canonical implication (?) that Hux killed his father at some point. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Beta'd by the bae, [kaasknot](http://www.kaasknot.tumblr.com)

Hux hasn’t flown a ship in years, not since his last mandatory certification, but the muscle memory returns like a song learned in childhood. Feet braced on the shuddering deck, his hands fly over the controls, disengaging the landing gear and overriding the plasma priming sequence. The shuttle jerks into liftoff before the coils have time to warm up. Hux catches himself on the overhead bulkhead as the nose drags clumsily, reaching to slap off the blaring klaxon telling him the engine isn’t hot for extra-atmosphere flight. 

He can’t leave the planet yet, anyway.

The viewscreen shows a riot of flame and smoke in every direction, Starkiller’s oscillator billowing clouds of fire and ash hundreds of feet into the air. The shuttle dips alarmingly off the launch pad, sinking for a long second toward the deep chasm between oscillator and landing field. Hux reaches for the gyroscopic accelerator and the shuttle self-corrects, levelling off and yawing right, toward the wide expanse of snow and trees lit up red with the reflection of destruction. 

Hux falls sideways into the pilot’s chair, grabbing for the yoke. The shuttle will turn and head straight for orbit if it can, automatically avoiding the raining debris and circling Resistance X-wings. He cancels the autopilot and angles toward the forest floor. He curses. It’s so dark down there, the ground cracking and splitting in every direction, earth and trees toppling, fire licking up in enormous gouts. Ren could be anywhere, he could already be dead--

But no. He’s not. Hux knows it, sure and steady as the landscape of his own limbs in the back of his mind. Ren isn’t dead, he’s down there somewhere. It’s the only thing Hux is sure of at all, adrenaline pumping like electric shocks through his veins, every booming explosion, every flash of light ringing like blows in his ears and eyes. His base is dying beneath him, his Starkiller, his life’s--

He pushes the yoke and the shuttle drops toward the trees. There’s a tug like cold water in his belly, drawing him down, pulling him. It grows colder to the east, unpleasantly hollow, but warms when he drags the shuttle’s nose northwest. The shuttle skims the top of the trees, ground crumbling away below, exposing the bright veins of the planet within. Hux jerks the controls to avoid a plume of rocks and roots throw up by some internal detonation and--

He nearly hits his face on the console, doubling over around the dual yank of formless sensation in his stomach and mind, vision whiting out. It’s Ren, he’d know that blade of invasive attention anywhere, but it’s  _ off _ . Unfocused, sharp yet clumsy, tearing into Hux’s mind where before it had always sliced with a conniving delicacy. 

The shuttle clips four trees before Hux wrangles it back under control, correcting the spin enough to get his bearings, to squint through the flashing light and pick out a path toward the blind spot in his mind’s eye, the screaming void of hot rage and pain like a beacon he can only see with both eyes shut. He lands the shuttle without looking, not bothering with the glacial unfolding of the landing gear, and stumbles toward the hatch with both arms outflung to catch himself on the walls. The ramp unfolds, but Hux leaps the distance to the ground before it can finish. 

“Ren!” he shouts, staggering as the ground quakes. The air is hot on his face, blasted with the chemical stench of ozone and plasma, burning fuel. The ground is still thick with metling snow. It’s too loud, too hot; he can’t think; his body is moving on its own, taking him into the woods. He wants to stop, to check that the shuttle is safe to leave, but before he can even glance back, he’s running. Ducking branches and dodging fallen trees, shielding his eyes, searching, searching.

He sees Ren hunched half-upright at the foot of a boulder, one arm wrapped around his own waist, the other braced on the rock. He has no helmet. Hux runs toward him, sliding but not falling in the snow. He doesn’t spare a thought for propriety or care. He grabs both of Ren’s shoulders and pulls him up. He’s never touched Ren before, not deliberately, but the reaction he gets is not what he would have expected. Ren yelps like he’s been struck, recoiling, and then collapsing against Hux’s side. 

“Come on!” Hux shouts, his voice nearly cracking into a shriek. The ground is heaving beneath them. There’s a high-pitched roar in the air now, something both deeper and outside the omnipresent hum of machinery and engines under the planet’s crust. The planet is dying. 

They make it back to the shuttle with almost all of Ren’s weight in Hux’s arms, stumbling up the ramp. Hux shoves Ren against the nearest wall inside and lunges for the control panel. The shuttle lifts off gracelessly, unbalanced by the absence of extended landing gear, rocked by turbulence and earthquakes. 

They pull up into the air, the hatch snapping shut. Hux ducks instinctively as a Resistance X-wing zips by overhead, blasters strafing the shuttle’s hull. There’s no chance to return fire; the X-wing is gone before Hux can even get the shuttle pointed in the right direction. And the only right direction is  _ up _ . He throws the throttle into full and the shuttle kicks, lurching forward. He collapses into the pilot’s seat, feet swept from under him. He hears things falling behind him in the cabin, hears Ren gasp, wet and retching. They break atmosphere in seconds, a wash of orange light growing beneath them like the planet is reaching after them, growing up towards them. Hux notices with the single shred of attention not focused on the controls that the Finalizer is no longer in orbit. 

It takes a second for his brain to catch up with that information, to realise they have nowhere to go. Aside, that is, from the obvious destination, which is _away._ As fast as possible. Never has he been more grateful for the Lambda-class shuttle’s hyperdrive capacity. His hands move of their own accord again, priming the drive in a half-second of toggle-flips and button touches, but when he reaches for the lever and slams it forward into position, nothing happens. 

He does it again, paying attention this time to the pattern of commands his hands perform, but there is no comforting lengthening of the starfield, no snap of sensation in his inner ear to indicate a hyperdrive shift. Instinctively, he looks over his shoulder, as if he’ll be able to see Starkiller imploding behind them, but of course there’s only the chaotic cockpit, Ren in a heap of black on the floor, cabinets and supply panels flung open haphazardly by the jerkiness of their ascent. 

If there’s no hyperdrive, atmosphere engines will have to do. They’re already nearly at top capacity, but Hux stretches to shut off the blowback dampener, overriding the bypass that funnels excess atmospheric oxygen away from the combustion cylinders. It will be of no use in vacuum and will only slow them down.

The shuttle jumps again, jarring Hux’s spine and pressing him back into his seat as they put on an extra burst of speed. Three specks of red light streak across the viewscreen, kilometers distant. Resistance X-wings, Hux realises, fleeing the planet. Their hulls are lit from beneath by the rebirth of a star. The streaks blur, stretch, and vanish into hyperspace. 

Their own shuttle plods in pursuit, still buffeted by Starkiller’s gravity well. Light is beginning to flood the cabin as the growing star pulses brighter behind them, growing and swelling. Hux swallows, bracing both feet against the base of the console. He wants to shout a warning to Ren, to scream in the face of this chaos of devastation and panic, but he can’t draw the breath for it. All he can do is hold on for dear life as Starkiller goes nova beneath them. 

~*~

They drift for a long time. 

Hux sends out encrypted distress calls on every frequency he thinks won’t be monitored by the Resistance and a few that might be. Behind him, Ren lies on the floor and refuses to rise. He’s still alive, still awake, Hux had checked, but he’s done nothing but stare at the wall, lips moving silently. Hux realised after a cursory, distant examination, that the only reason the gruesome wound across Ren’s face isn’t bleeding is because it was cauterized in the instant of its formation. He recognizes a lightsaber strike when he sees one. Leaning back in the pilot’s chair, arms crossed, Hux thinks it’s an ugly thing. It’s going to get infected if they don’t find a bacta tank or a qualified droid soon. Ren’s face around the slash is livid, purple with bruised burns. His eyes are wet, hair plastered to his forehead. His gloved hands tremble, fingers curled against the deck plating.

“Ren…” Hux says at last. “Can you please do  _ something _ .” He’s exhausted all other options. The Resistance isn’t coming back, but neither is the Finalizer. They’re alone. “The Supreme Leader is expecting me to bring you to him. Can’t you…” He wiggles his fingers in the air. 

Ren doesn’t look at him. His eyes are fixed on some invisible middle distance. His mouth is still moving, reciting or praying or silently raving.

Hux sighs. He would yell, scream, maybe kick Ren in the ribs, but he’d tried all that ages ago and he’s tired now. He’s tired and he feels queasy. If he moves too much, if he shouts, he might throw up. It’s not a welcome or familiar sensation. Yelling has always been there for him in his time of need.

“I don’t know if you know this,” he says after a while, conversationally, “but I hate you more than I’ve hated anything in my entire life, and I still want to get us both out of this situation alive. Can you understand that?”

No response.

“We have food and water in the emergency packs for three days. That’s it.” It doesn’t frighten him, exactly, but it does make a knot of tension wind tight and frayed in his chest. “We can’t get  _ anywhere  _ in three days with a broken hyperdrive. I’ve… done everything I can.”

The words are bitter in his mouth. His pre-naval matriculation had been in engineering, but not even the First Order’s best schools could teach someone to rebuild a hyperdrive from nothing. Shrapnel from Starkiller had ripped the entire unit out by the roots. If Hux presses his forehead to the starboard window just right and squints through the rippling distortion of the transparisteel, he can make out the scorched and tattered edge of the engine compartment where the primary plasma actuator should have jutted out. They’re lucky the whole craft wasn’t blown to hell the instant he’d tried to engage the drive. 

If Hux had hoped that a tacit admission of his own inadequacies would rouse Ren from his stupor, he is mistaken. There’s no change, only a slow blink that sends a single tear sliding over the bridge of Ren’s nose to drip onto the floor.

Hux sighs in disgust. He drops his head against the back of the chair. He says,“I’m going to gut you like a fish and eat your liver if we run out of food before someone comes to save us.”

He takes Ren’s silence as concession.

~*~

It’s an embarrassingly long time before Hux remembers his twentieth birthday. 

It had fallen, with a serendipity that bordered on the divine, on the same day as his graduation from Pondosa III’s post-secondary institution and his official induction into the command track of the First Order’s naval academy. There had been a gala at the school in honour of the graduates and after the third rousing round of toasts to order, success, and manifest destiny, his father approached him with a tiny box. It was wrapped with a precision that indicated it had been done professionally. 

“Insurance policy,” said his father brusquely when Hux took it. 

Hux set aside his champagne flute and tore open the paper to reveal a lethally fat syringe already loaded with a speck of silicon in a tiny diamond stasis cube. He hadn’t understood at first, staring down into the box and wondering, with a sick trepidation, if his father had at last noticed his embarrassing dependency on stimulants and was giving him this kit in backhanded acknowledgement. Then his father said, “Dynamic subdermal tracker,” and Hux went weak with relief.

He glanced up at his father, who had his own empty flute gripped in one thick hand and a scowl between his grey eyebrows. It seemed only partially directed at Hux and more generally at the rest of the universe. 

“Really?”

His father’s frown deepened. “I want to see you implant it.”

Hux’s jaw slackened. “Now?”

“Now.”

He’d stood frozen for a long moment. Trackers were a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they allowed the possessor to be located anywhere in the galaxy via subspace relay networks that could, if the implant was sophisticated enough, provide realtime information about vitals signs, physical location, and proximity to all manner of wireless technologies. They were, indeed, an insurance policy of the most direct kind, the sort of devices celebrities and politicians equipped their children and spouses and beloved pets with. They provided round-the-clock observation and the omnipresent implication of protection.

On the other hand… All of the above. 

“But…” Hux stammered and instantly regretted it. He flushed with embarrassment and champagne. He straightened his spine, squeezing the little box. “Why?”

His father gave him a very familiar look. Namely, like Hux was an intolerable moron who’d just pissed on the carpet in front of guests. “You’re entering the academy now, you’ll be out in the field soon and commanding from the front lines. I want to keep an eye on you.”

It sent a hot bloom through Hux to hear the words. It was everything he had been telling himself for years, that he would rise through the ranks in short distinguished order and make a name for himself, that he would command the army, that he would lead from the vanguard, that his father would know all these things, that he would say them aloud in public.

He met his father’s eyes. He had only two options. 

“Alright,” he said. He pried the syringe from the box with fingers that shook only very slightly and set the point against the inside of his forearm. It hurt like an absolute bugger going in, but he grit his teeth and didn’t make a noise. Blood welled around the puncture when he withdrew the needle. He wiped it away with the edge of his black cuff.

His father said nothing. He nodded, turned on his heel, and walked away.

It only occurred to Hux years later the significance of his father making such an expensive and comprehensive offer once Hux had reached the age of majority and proven himself a worthwhile investment, and not as a sickly child vulnerable to casual predation. 

He hadn’t been surprised. Not in the least. 

~*~

“My father…” Hux says, then stops. That is not how he wants to frame it. “I have a subdermal implant,” he says instead. 

Ren had stopped mumbling to himself a while ago and has taken to staring into the far distance instead. It’s not catatonia, Hux doesn’t think, not quite, because sometimes he makes expressions like he is having a distasteful internal argument with himself and losing. 

Hux extends his left arm. He’d shucked his coat over the back of the chair and rolled up the sleeves of his undershirt hours ago to dig without success into the mass of wires and circuit boards beneath the control console. There’s a tiny white comma of a scar just beneath the bend of his elbow, hardly noticeable. If he presses down on it hard, he can feel the little lump of diamond underneath. 

“It might take a while for anyone to think to trigger it,” he continues, “but soon--”

“Your father doesn’t love you,” Ren says.

It brings Hux up short. He stares at Ren down the length of his own arm. “I  _ beg  _ your pardon?”

Ren’s bloodshot eyes meet his. “Your father doesn’t love you,” he repeats. “That’s what you’re thinking.”

Hux is so astounded he doesn’t reply for an incriminatingly long second. There’s no malice in Ren’s eyes, not even the vapid eagerness for conflict Hux has often imagined lurking behind the now-absent mask. Only a flat, mild curiosity, like Ren has said  _ Water is wet  _ and is waiting to see how Hux will reply. 

Hux drops his arm and leans forward. “What I am thinking is none of your concern, thank you very much.”

“I didn’t say I was concerned.” Ren rolls over onto his back. It’s a slow, laborious motion. A beached markle too overwhelmed by stupidity and exhaustion to crawl back down the shore into the ocean. His limbs flop in every direction. He addresses the ceiling. “But you are.” His tone is the same as his expression: curious, mild, flat. 

Hux knows it is pointless to tell Ren to mind his own business. “Mind your own business.”

Ren’s head flops softly to the side, away from Hux, so that his next words are barely audible. “You don’t think he’ll come find you, because you’ve failed so badly. You think he’ll leave you out here to drift until we starve to death.” One of his shoulders moves against the deck in a little shrug. “Or until you kill me and eat my liver.”

Hux slides a little further down in his chair so he can kick Ren in the thigh with the toe of his boot. It’s horribly petty, a ridiculous understatement of a reaction. “I’ll eat your heart first,” he says. It sounds apathetic even to his own ears. 

Ren’s head tips slowly back around. He meets Hux’s eyes. His ruined face is nearly peaceful, his mouth slack in a way Hux would like to describe as dim-witted, but instead can’t describe at all. It pulls up at one corner into an almost-smile. “Promise?”

Hux lets out a slow deep breath. “Of all the ways I would like to die, trapped in a tiny metal box with a lunatic is very low on my list.”

Ren nods as though Hux has said something quite clever, even ironic. “Let’s not die, then.”

~*~

Hux explains their situation. 

Ren says, “I know, I heard you the first time.”

“Well then why didn’t you fucking answer me?”

Ren reaches up to rub his uninjured eye with the heel of one gloved hand. “I was busy.”

Hux laughs, short and nasty. “With what, composing your own eulogy?”

Nonsensically, Ren reaches for the buckle of his tunic and pries it open. He winces, peeling the edge of the cloth up his belly. “Not bleeding to death.”

Hux eyes the raw mess of Ren’s side. His lip curls with revulsion and the remembrance of any number of his own ancient wounds. “Did that little girl do that to you too?”

Ren’s hand drops, leaving the wound just visible beneath the hem of his tunic. It’s not bleeding, although the cloth around it is stiff with blood. It has dried in a thick smear all across Ren’s side and belly. “No,” he says.

Hux waits, but Ren is silent. “You should have said,” Hux grumbles at last. “There are medical supplies in the emergency kit.”

Ren shrugs again, both shoulders this time. “Faster this way.”

Hux has never seen healing magic done before, and he is frankly suspicious of the efficacy of any effort requiring skill or delicacy on Ren’s part. “It’s still a mess,” he says. “It will get infected.”

“Infection is part of life.”

Hux rolls his eyes. “That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.” He stands up and reaches to fetch the kit from its cubby above the console. He’d done an inventory as soon as he’d established the impossibility of lightspeed. He knows just where the antiseptic and bacta patches are. He puts them down on the floor next to Ren’s elbow. “Humour me.”

Ren stares up at him. He’s terribly calm. His chest rises and falls evenly, his shoulders relaxed. He doesn’t look at all like someone who just lost a swordfight with near-fatal results, escaped an exploding planet by the skin of his teeth, and spent hours in a healing trance to avoid exsanguination. But then again, by what metric can Hux measure the appropriateness of anyone’s reaction to a single one of those events?

“If I die,” Ren says, less mild this time, “you think no one will come for you.”

Hux sighs. “If you die, I think someone  _ will  _ come for me, and I won’t like what happens next.” 

He hadn’t meant to say that. Not quite. It’s much too close to the truth. He narrows his eyes, a sudden suspicion dawning on him. “Why are you reading my thoughts?  _ How  _ are you reading my thoughts?”

Ren has done it before, throwing little worries and bursts of anger back in Hux’s face with a precision that could only be mystical in provenance, but never more than one at a time, and never in this much detail. It should be impossible, for one, and for another it should be making Hux much angrier than he is.

When Ren doesn’t answer, Hux clenches his fist at his side. “What have you done?”

“Nothing permanent,” Ren says reluctantly. 

“That is not remotely comforting!”

Ren’s jaw shifts like he wants to chew the inside of his cheek but is stopped by the burnt stretch of his wound. He doesn’t appear nearly as concerned as he should be, lying prostrate and injured on the floor at Hux’s feet. 

“Why don’t you sit down?” he says.

“Why don’t you tell me what the fuck is happening before I really do cut out your liver?” Hux suggests. Even angry as he is, even suspicious and full of the panicked mortification any thinking creature would feel in the presence of an untrustworthy mind-reader, there is a film over these emotions, a glassy remove that dulls the edges. He can see it now that he’s looking for it. He  _ could  _ kick Ren again, he  _ could  _ strangle the life out of him, he  _ could  _ destroy this cabin with his bare fists and all the sickening dread that’s been building in him since the moment he realised Starkiller was doomed, but… It simply doesn’t seem all that urgent.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Ren looks away from him. “There’s no point.”

Hux takes a deep breath. The warm recycled air doesn’t clear his head, exactly, but it gives him a moment to think. “If someone who considers themself an expert in a field cannot explain the most complex facet of that field to a six year old child, then they are not a true expert.”

Ren laughs, unexpectedly. “That’s bullshit.”

“Perhaps. But I am not a six year old child. Dazzle me.”

He thinks that Ren will ignore him and lapse back into silently staring into a distance that doesn’t exist, but instead he says, “You found me. In the forest.”

Hux nods. “Yes. The Supreme Leader--”

“Yes, I know. How did you find me?”

Hux hesitates. “You were right there. I saw you.”

“In the dark? With the planet exploding under you? You had no idea where I was.”

It’s true, but it doesn’t merit consideration. “I found you, that’s the important part. What’s your point?”

“No, that’s not the important part.” Ren pushes himself up on one elbow. He doesn’t wince, although bending at the waist like that must pull his injury. “ _ How _ , Hux. How did you find me.”

Another moment of hesitation. He knows, but saying it aloud feels like defeat, like giving Ren accolades he doesn’t deserve. Ren stares at him implacably, waiting. Hux groans. He wiggles his fingers.

Ren nods. 

Hux sits down cross-legged on the floor. His knees don’t feel especially strong. “So what?” He makes an sharp gesture. “You...  _ called  _ me. What does that matter?”

“I called you a little too loudly.”

Hux stares. “I haven’t a single idea what that could mean.”

For the first time, a spasm of impatience crosses Ren’s face. Hux… feels it. He feels it in that same distant way he feels his own anger and fear, but stranger, as though it is a different colour. A distinctly Ren colour. His horrible suspicions grow tenfold. “Ren…” he says, warning.

“I said it wasn’t permanent,” says Ren quickly.

“ _ What  _ isn’t permanent?” It’s just about a shout. An awful tightness is growing in Hux’s throat. It might be panic. 

“I don’t know.” Ren’s fist curls against the deck plating. “I don’t-- I don’t think it has a name, it’s not a  _ thing _ . It’s just… something that happened. A…” He pauses, like he doesn’t want to say the word that is clearly on the tip of his tongue. 

“Connection,” Hux finishes for him. The word tastes vile.

Ren looks away like there are much more interesting things to see on the wall behind Hux’s shoulder. “If you like.”

“I absolutely do not like!” Hux rakes a hand back through his hair. It’s a bad habit, one he had excised years ago to preserve the strict professionalism of his style, but he does it now with the thoughtlessness of tonguing a bad tooth. He pulls the hair at the top of his head as though by lifting off the top of his skull he could physically force Ren from his mind. “Make it stop.”

Ren frowns. It’s not quite disapproving, but it’s close. “I can’t.”

“That makes no sense!”

“I thought you said you weren’t six years old. I don’t know how to say it simpler.”

Hux growls. “When you say…  _ connection _ …” He has to stop and swallow back the bile rising in his throat. “Do you mean the sort of communication you share with Leader Snoke?”

“No.” 

“Then  _ what _ ?”

Ren looks at the floor, flattening his gloved palm against it. His jaw shifts again, contemplative. When he speaks, his voice is low, a hypnotic softness to it as though he is reciting a well-worn poem. “Have you ever looked at the sun and then, when you looked away, the image of it was still burning in your eyes?”

“No, because I am not an idiot who never learned not to look at stars.”

Ren glowers at him from beneath his lashes. The bruising around his right eye is truly spectacular, deep purple shot through with red and blue. “Use your imagination for something other than political hyperbole. It’s like that, or when a loud noise makes your ears ring. I think.”

“You  _ think _ .”

“I said I didn’t know.”

“You’ve also said, on multiple occasions, that you are  _ strong in the Force _ , whatever the bloody hell that is supposed to mean. Use your Force strength for something other than mystical hyperbole.”

Ren’s hand fists against the deck. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Then how  _ does  _ it work?”

“You’re getting upset.”

Hux barks out a laugh. There’s a distinct hysterical edge to it. As though surfacing from the depths of an enormous cold lake, he feels rage beginning to fill him, breaking through the comfortable haze that had been obscuring it. “Upset?” he demands. “I am fucking  _ angry _ , you--”

Ren reaches out, much faster than Hux would have expected considering the state of him, and snatches Hux’s hand from his lap. His gloved fingers squeeze the bones of Hux’s wrist. Not hard. “Are you?” he says.

Caught at the edge, ready to dive, to meet his rage and embrace it in both arms, Hux teeters. He watches his anger crest the surface of the lake, water frothing at its edges, and stop. For an endless moment, they hang motionless together, Hux and his anger. And then, slowly, the half-visible hulk of it begins to sink. He watches it go, vanishing leviathan-slow back into the murk until it is lost entirely from sight. He stumbles back from the shore.

“No,” he says, deflating. “I’m not.”

Ren nods. They watch each other. Ren makes a tiny rueful expression, a tick at the corner of his mouth, a shift of his eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Are you?” Hux is surprised, distantly. 

“Yes. I don’t like doing that.”

Also surprising. “Why not?” 

Ren hesitates. “It’s not right.” He shakes his head. “It’s not true, I mean.”

“Then why are you doing it?” Hux lifts his hand. Ren is still holding it. “Perhaps it started by accident, but you’re maintaining it now.”

There’s a pause while Ren wrangles his thoughts with all the grace of a labouring steam engine. “Not maintaining. Just… managing. It’s different.”

Hux shakes his head. “Not from where I’m sitting.”

Ren looks up at him from beneath his lashes again. He’s not glowering this time. “Then sit somewhere else.”

~*~

Hux watches Ren dress the wound in his side and the one on his shoulder. Now that he’s looking closer, the extent of the damage becomes gruesomely apparent. He doesn’t say so, but he is impressed that Ren’s cogent as he is. Hux has seen plenty of soldiers fall to gibbering ruin at the merest suggestion of injury, much less after sustaining wounds like these. 

When Ren has finished wiping and bandaging the hole in his side, he pulls his tunic open up the length of his torso and Hux sees for the first time how the slash that bisected his face had split his chest and throat as well. Hux has seen lightsabers at work; it must have been by the slenderest luck that only the tip of the girl’s sword caught Ren’s flesh and hadn’t speared him through.

Hux hasn’t been made sick by blood since he was a very small boy and he is not about to start now. He watches Ren map out the extent of the injury, taking off his gloves to feel the edges with his fingertips. He is sitting up properly now, mirroring Hux’s position with his legs crossed, the medkit spread on the floor between them. He catches Hux watching. He doesn’t look embarrassed, per se, but it’s something similar. Haughtiness caught with its pants down.

Hux recognises within himself the expected surge of spiteful triumph, but it arrives muted and without heat. He lets it show on his face nonetheless. 

“Is it bad?” Ren asks. He clearly doesn’t expect an answer, he just wants Hux to know he’s seen the spite and is magnanimously choosing not to be upset by it. 

Hux shows his teeth. “Very. You’re losing your looks.”

It’s not true. Damnably untrue. But Ren nods, accepting it. He begins swiping at himself with an antiseptic wipe. 

Hux can only watch for so long. “Stop, you’re making it worse.” He leans forward and takes the wipe from Ren. It’s dark with dirt and blood, frayed from the scrape of Ren’s stubble. He drops it and pulls a fresh one from the container. “Tip your head back.”

Ren obeys. The length of his neck is flushed with bruises, sweat gleaming in the dirty vaults of his throat. He smells rank up close, ripe and salty. Hux swallows. He wipes the underside of Ren’s chin first, where the saber had nicked neatly up over the edge of his jaw. “You are fucking lucky,” he mutters. “You’re a fucking lucky idiot.”

“It wasn’t luck,” Ren says. It makes his throat bob and the livid edge of the wound pull. 

“Stop talking.” Hux picks at a bit of dried dirt with his thumbnail. “Don’t try to impress me.”

“I’m not.”

“We both know you’re a moron who got his ass kicked by an untrained child.” Hux folds the wipe and runs it over Ren’s collarbone, not gently. “How she didn’t cut your head off is a mystery for the ages.”

The farther down he goes, the worse the wound gets. It begins in the middle of Ren’s right pectoral, a shallow flick that deepens and widens as it rises. Hux stares at it with growing incredulity as he scrubs it clean. Ren either sees the look on his face or plucks the thought from his mind. 

“I told you it wasn’t luck. She nearly killed me.”

Hux glances up at him. Ren is still staring at the roof. “This is what you were healing?”

“Yes. And the…” He pauses, the next word bitten off. He touches his side. 

It’s not a blaster shot, that much is evident, and it’s not a lightsaber strike. Hux decides, with a deliberation edging into beneficence, not to ask. 

When he gets to Ren’s face, he presses at Ren’s chin to tip his head back down. Ren obeys with the same quiet acquiescence as before. It’s a good look on him, Hux decides, without examining the thought too closely. This must be what Snoke sees: the gentle slope of Ren’s shoulders and the slowness of his breath, the soft attention in his eyes like a stupid hound dozing next to a fire, waiting for a word of command. He’s calm, still, the blaze in him banked as though it’s burnt up all its fuel.

Ren smiles. “You’re keeping me calm,” he says.

Hux glances at him. “I take it back.  _ That  _ is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

Ren tips his head a little to the left. Not pulling away from Hux’s brisk cleaning, but eyeing him from a new angle. “You can’t feel it?”

The worst thing is, Hux can. He knows just what Ren is talking about. It’s the muzzy peace that has wrapped him up tight as a thick wool blanket, an insulation that has crept into the shuttle like a heavy snowbank. He examines his concerns about their potential imminent demise, the catastrophic destruction of his beloved Starkiller, the nauseating certainty of the punishment he will meet at Snoke’s hand. It’s like hearing about a hurricane on a planet a thousand light years away.

He shrugs. “I suppose.”

“It’s the healing trance. The effects of it. You’re feeling it now. And I’m feeling it from you.”

Mystic mumbo jumbo. Hux sighs. “That’s very nice, Ren.” There’s no sting to his words. He pulls out a new wipe and sits up straight on his knees to get closer. “Close your eyes.”

Ren does. He lets his strangely shaped, wounded, beautiful face rest in Hux’s hands. Much more gently than he had intended, Hux cleans the jagged burn where it had skipped Ren’s eye by a fraction of an inch and cut his brow in two. Ren breathes slow and deep beneath him, his bare chest rising and falling, his knees touching Hux’s. 

“It’ll be fine,” Hux mutters, to fill the silence. “It’s burnt clean.”

Ren mumbles, as though he is on the verge of sleep, “I know.”

He lifts his hand and wraps it around Hux’s thigh. 

The breath stutters in Hux’s throat. His hand keeps moving. After a minute, he says, “Ren…”

Ren’s eyes are still closed, moving beneath the lids. “Do you want to?” he says.

It’s horrible. It’s juvenile. It’s the very last thing Hux is interested in hearing. 

“Yes,” he says.

~*~

Five hours later, the shuttle’s proximity alert wakes Hux from the deepest sleep he’s had in years. It takes him a long time to struggle to consciousness, and longer after that to get free of the huge arm Ren has draped across him. He sits up and knuckles his eyes, head swimming.

There’s a peculiar clarity to his disoriented thoughts. An isolation. He looks down at Ren, naked and asleep on his belly despite his injuries. His mouth is open against the deck plating, drooling a little. His shoulders are wide, pale, flecked with freckles and moles. Hux stares at him with the most peculiar sensation, like he is seeing two overlapping but distinct images. Two mutually exclusive futures laid out neatly before him, and the key to choosing resting squarely in the palm of his hand. 

He looks up, out the shuttle’s main viewport. 

The Finalizer has come for them.


End file.
